Mountainside United

Mountainside United is a historically rich and living Christian community formed through the amalgamation of four congregations whose roots reach back to nineteenth century Montreal. Emerging from the Methodist and Presbyterian traditions, the church’s story spans multiple neighborhoods, buildings, and generations. It is formed by growth, fire, relocation, and reunion.

These congregations came together in the twentieth century within the United Church of Canada. This culminated in the adoption of the name Mountainside United in 2005, a name that reflects both its physical setting in Westmount and its shared spiritual identity.

Today, Mountainside United is a multicultural and ethnically diverse community that understands unity not as sameness, but as strength forged through history, faith, and shared purpose.

In harmony, Filipino traditions and Western influences are blended and elevated to create a rich cultural mix. This community of worshippers meets every Sunday at McGill Birks Chapel in the heart of the university's religious studies department. It is a beacon of welcome for students who may need a spiritual home away from home, and over the course of this project it has added several student members. With its mix of cultures, and inclusion of traditional language in prayer and worship showcase the message that at Mountainside United, all are truly welcome.

Another highlight of this community is its choir. Performing together, these artists bring the community together with praise and inspiration. Soloists, both vocal and instrumental are common sights during the liturgical year with concert-level events sprinkled throughout.

The JS Project

Through a well-crafted streaming system, the community is able to reach members outside the pews. Through the Journey Society project, we examined how we could expand Mountainside's reach by creating low-effort, low-cost podcasts. Each Sunday sermon is recorded live, processed, and added to a podcast template using a professional recording system.Featuring both English and Filipino versions, this template starts with a simple musical greeting before moving on to the sermon.

Once processed, this sermon is automatically uploaded to our podcast hosting system and then disseminated to multiple podcast directories all over the world.

A Low Barrier Approach

For churches and their leadership teams, it's often not a desire to try new things, but limitations to budget and time. The Mountainside podcast project was crafted with these constraints in mind. By recording sermons live no extra time is required by the pastor and with ready-made templates the production time takes less than an hour. This simple template and recording workflow allows ministry teams to 'dip their toe' into digital ministry without extreme cost or time.

Project Status

The project continues until Easter 2026 and has been a relative success. While our podcast download numbers remain low but steady, our streaming numbers have been exceptionally high. With minimal (under $100) marketing, the podcast has weekly streaming numbers of 1000 or more per week with around 5% of those listeners visiting the church podcast micro-sites.